Is DE effective against flea beetles? No. Not much is unless you want to bring out the toxic stuff. So we live with them. Besides their life span is short.

If appearance is that important then Bayer makes a good 3 in 1 chem spray that many have reported is effective on them as well as the aphids. Is it better or worse than Sevin? I have no idea. Just reporting what others have said.

It is a bad year for aphids all over the country given the cool wet weather. They thrive. Only you can decide how much damage they are doing and if it is worth using something other than just blasting them off with water or soapy water. Personally my gardens are full of them, on every plant but the plants are healthy so other than water blasting them every couple of days when the sun manages to get out I am ignoring them and hoping for dry warmer sunnier weather. If things don't improve then I may resort to soapy water spray used with care. Your choice.

Ants I always ignore. They do more good than harm...except for fire ants.

Dave

You may want to take care of the ant problem to an extent though before releasing lacewing eggs next time. The ants will eat them from what I've read. Same thing with ladybugs(larvae) -- they protect the aphids from them. Dave's probably got a balanced enough garden to never warrant the release of beneficials. I, like many others, do not. :)

Like Dave said, spraying the undersides of the leaves with a water nozzle every 2-3 days in the morning(and if it's not too humid where you are, at dusk) will disrupt the life cycle a tad so, if and when, you do the soap, the applications of soap are more effective.

JMO.

Kevin

I use SAVIN and NEEM oil spray.
But I do not yet believe in the ANTS CONSPIRACY THEORY. where I had aphids , I did not see a single ant around there. I Think it is true that ants like aphids but I do not believe that they farm aphids.
You are entitled to believe in whatever you like and want :D

Seysonn: See it for yourself. Just because you haven't ever seen it doesn't mean it doesn't happen. I saw it just yesterday on one of my pepper plants. To each their own, I guess.

Kevin

Here is a link that might be useful: Ants

I'd have let the ants be if I hadn't seen for myself how they were farming the aphids. Actually the black aphids didn't appear on my amaranth until after the ants did - I suspect they imported the little suckers.

Thanks for the tip about the 3 in 1 spray. I'll read up on it and consider whether or not it's worth the risk.

I will spray with the plain water more often. It's worth getting up early to do it before work if it keeps the aphids down. I wish I was sure the aphids were the reason why my plants aren't thriving, or if it's just the cool spring. Probably they reinforce each other.

Thank you all.

I wish I was sure the aphids were the reason why my plants aren't thriving, or if it's just the cool spring. Probably they reinforce each other.

Aphids don't cause failure to thrive. But in a cool wet spring the lack of available nutrients does so easily. Plants will always require extra feeding - preferably in the form of side dressing with granular fertilizers - in cool wet weather. So what and how much have you fed your plants?

Try the standard soapy water spray before going for the 3 in 1. 1 T liquid dish soap in 1 gallon of water, shake well fill sprayer, mist the bugs, do NOT drench the plants. Never apply in the direct sun. Some add 1 tsp. vegetable oil to it for a sticker. I don't.

And yes, the fact that ants farm aphids is well documented. But it isn't that they "bring" the aphids to the plants in the first place, They find the busy herd in their normal travels and then move in on them to farm for honeydew food.

Dave

If you're willing to spend $75 (ish), you can flood your garden with a few thousand purchased ladybugs. It is a short-term fix only but will help you not feel so overwhelmed with the aphids and save your time. Many will stick around to eat the aphids, some will reproduce, and then the adults will fly away when the aphid population comes down. Additionally, the presence of a high density of predators induces a panic reaction in aphids that causes them to perform a mass migration - where they will be picked off on the ground by other predators as well.

Slimy_okra: $75??? I ordered 1500 off Amazon(Hirt's Garden's) last year for like 10-15 bucks.

I'm ordering Lacewings(larvae/eggs) this year. I've read they're a much better beneficial.

Kevin

Dave - I started last season with half leaf compost and half topsoil, and worked in a standard 10-10-10 at the beginning of this year. Should I be adding more, given the weather? If fertilizing will help, I'll jump on it. I wouldn't know how to get my hands on "fish emulsion" but I could come up with something useful, I'm sure. I do plant fairly intensively - it's a small backyard, after all :-) and I'm trying to get a lot out of it. The weeds are certainly growing well, it's a good thing I like to eat purslane.

I decided against buying ladybugs after I found a link online that indicated most purchased ladybugs are wild caught rather than farmed, and therefore may be mixed up with Asian ladybeetles. The Asian beetles are a plague at my parent's house and I would never risk doing anything that would bring them near my home. What a nightmare! I may try more lacewings if my budget can stretch that far, though.

Oh - and I can no longer say I haven't seen an SVB yet. I picked off at least 20 eggs tonight from the 3 plants each of crookneck, pumpkins, and tromboncino. Nothing on the cucumbers so far.

Actually some ants do bring the aphids to the plants, others are opportunistic farmers. It's misleading to talk about ants, or aphids, as if they are all the same. There are thousands of different, unique types of ants in the world and they don't even all eat the same things. There are populations of aphids that are winged and fly to new plants, others are carried by ants. The OP probably has both types occurring. There are some cases where I ignore aphids happening, like trees and sunflowers, since large plants often don't seem to care. Also some populations of aphid are not large enough for me to bother with.

Anyway, for the OP's particular case, I would say if the ants ignored the bait, then it isn't the right type of food for them. Baits can be protien based or sugar based. Sugar based baits are probably appropriate for the ants in question, but even that may not be enough to get them to sample it. Since they are feeding on honeydew, it is likely that these ants will go for a bait that is in a liquid or at least gel, form. I think you can find baits and traps online that will work. I made a homemade bait of sugar water and borax that worked pretty well last year, but you have to be careful with the borax. It's pretty much harmless to us and most wildlife, but the plants really don't like excess boron.

Don't know if any of that will prove useful to you in the long run, since a lot of what you are seeing sounds environmentally based. But sometimes a little intervention can give a plant enough energy to survive until the weather or soil get to be more copeacetic.